The Transporter: Best Chuck Norris Movie Ever

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 229 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Transporter (2002)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: France
Running time: 92 minutes (1 hour, 32 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for violent sequences and some sensuality
DIRECTORS: Louis Leterrier with Corey Yuen
WRITERS: Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen
PRODUCERS: Steve Chasman and Luc Besson
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Pierre Morel
EDITOR: Nicolas Trembasiewicz

ACTION/THRILLER/CRIME with elements of martial arts and drama

Starring: Jason Statham, Qi Shu, Matt Schulze, François Berléand, and Ric Young

The subject of this movie review is The Transporter, a 2002 French action film from writer/producer Luc Besson. The film is the first in a series starring Jason Statham as a driver-for-hire who will deliver anything, anywhere with no questions asked.

Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is a “transporter,” a man who makes deliveries in his 7-series BMW, moving either people or packages from one place to another, no questions asked. A serious of unfortunate events begins for Frank when he opens a “package” and discovers that it contains human cargo: a young Asian woman, bound and gagged. He falls for the young woman named Lai (Qi Shu) and decides to help her after she throws some lovin’ on him, but it sends him against a seemingly endless number of men who want to kill him.

The Transporter is the kind of big, splashy, American-style action movie that French filmmaker Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) loves to make, either as writer, producer, and/or director. The Transporter is big, dumb, highly entertaining and lots of fun, based entirely on the lead Jason Statham’s tough guy persona and also on several high-octane, chop-socky-on-steroids-fight sequences. After watching about half of it, I realized that The Transporter is the best Bruce Lee movie made since Lee’s untimely demise. Since the star Statham is white, that would make this the best Chuck Norris movie ever, since Norris was a clunky white version of Bruce Lee. So if you like Norris and lots of man-to-man fisticuffs, The Transporter is a hot one.

7 of 10
B+

LEGO 3D Animated Feature Film Set for February 2014

LEGO® Film Set for Theatrical Debut February 28, 2014

Warner Bros. Pictures Brings the LEGO Brand to the Big Screen for the First Time in an Original 3D Animated Feature

BURBANK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The first-ever full length, theatrical LEGO® movie will open nationwide on February 28, 2014, it was announced today by Dan Fellman, President of Domestic Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures.

Currently in production, the 3D computer animated adventure will be directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller from their original screenplay, story by Dan Hageman & Kevin Hageman and Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, based on LEGO Construction Toys. It will incorporate some of the LEGO world’s most popular figures while introducing several new characters, inviting fans who have enjoyed the brand’s innovative toys and hugely popular video games for generations to experience their visually unique LEGO world as never seen before.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller previously teamed on the hit “21 Jump Street” and the 2009 animated comedy adventure “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

The film will be produced by Dan Lin (“Sherlock Holmes,” “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”) and Roy Lee (“The Departed,” “How to Train Your Dragon”).

LEGO, its logo, brick & knob configuration and the Minifigure are trademarks of The LEGO Group. ©2012 The LEGO Group. All rights reserved.

Review: "Down with Love" With is a Showcase for Costume Design (Happy B'day, Renee Zellweger)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 39 (of 2005) by Leroy Douresseaux

Down with Love (2003)
Running time: 101 minutes (1 hour, 41 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for sexual humor and dialogue
DIRECTOR: Peyton Reed
WRITERS: Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake
PRODUCERS: Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jeff Cronenweth
EDITOR: Larry Bock

COMEDY/ROMANCE

Starring: Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Sarah Paulson, David Hyde Pierce, Rachel Dratch, Jack Plotnick, Tony Randall, and Jeri Ryan

The subject of this movie review is Down with Love, a 2003 romantic comedy. Directed by Peyton Reed, it is a pastiche of early 1960s sex comedies.

The Renée Zellweger-Ewan McGregor comedy, Down with Love, was apparently an attempt to recreate the Doris Day-Rock Hudson film Pillow Talk in both appearance and mood. Down with Love also tries to capture the time period of similar comedies from the 1950’s and 1960’s, like the 1964 Natalie Wood movie, Sex and the Single Girl, from which Down with Love borrows the plot device of a heroine writing a best selling book. The film does want to be something from the past, but it is more retro than accurate. The anachronisms may be deliberate, but that makes the film a strange hybrid of being both historical fiction and a naïve nostalgic revival. It’s so peculiar that the best I can do is say that I found it mildly entertaining and pleasant with its wall to wall tongue-in-cheek humor, but I can’t say any reader of this review will like it, although the film clearly had admirers including several print, television, and online reviewers.

Barbara Novak (Ms. Zellweger) writes a best-selling book, Down with Love, that leads a lot of women to start looking at love, relationships, and sex the way men do. Barbara earns the ire of dashing playboy journalist, Catcher Block (McGregor). A womanizer who is described as a “man’s man, ladies’ man, man about town,” Block targets Barbara for a takedown. He adopts the guise of an innocent Southern gentleman and astronaut and courts Barbara in an attempt to make her do just what her book says women should not do, fall in love with a man, but will Catcher fall in love with Barbara?

Down with Love is coy and filled with sexual innuendo. The innuendo is good for some laughs, but the coyness ultimately hurts the film. In the final analysis the films seems to encourage marriage, while also suggesting that a woman assume some feminist position of power. Chase a man, then run away from the man when you realize that you’ve mistakenly fallen in love with him. Make him beg to respect you, play hard to get, then give in – I don’t know what’s going on here. However, Down with Love certainly looks like the few romantic comedies from the 1950’s and 60’s I’ve seen. The art direction resulted in some truly beautiful sets and the cinematography is both of a fine quality and convincingly looks like the time period it attempts to mimic.

Ms. Zellweger and McGregor are charming, but are more or less on automatic, relying on star power, their good looks and reputations rather than on acting chops. The actual standout performer in Down with Love is the costume designer Daniel Orlandi and his crew. Every costume (from head to toe) was custom made for each character. So I’ll recommend this film for fans of the lead performers and romantic/comedies, especially of those from the 1950’s and 60’s.

5 of 10
B-

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Jackie Robinson Movie, "42" Begins Shooting in May; Stars Harrison Ford

Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures Put “42” on Deck for April 12, 2013

Harrison Ford and Chadwick Boseman star in the Jackie Robinson story under the direction of Brian Helgeland

BURBANK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures are teaming up with director Brian Helgeland for “42,” the story of baseball great Jackie Robinson. Slated for release on April 12, 2013, the film will open in time to commemorate the 66th anniversary of Jackie Robinson Day—April 15, the date of his first game as a Brooklyn Dodger—and on the heels of the opening of the 2013 Major League Baseball season. The announcement was made today by Dan Fellman, President, Domestic Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures.

“42” will star Academy Award® nominee Harrison Ford (“What Lies Beneath,” “Air Force One,” “Witness”) as the innovative Dodger’s general manager Branch Rickey, the MLB executive who first signed Robinson to the minors and then helped to bring him up to the show, and Chadwick Boseman (“The Express”) as Robinson, the heroic African American who was the first man to break the color line in the big leagues. The film also stars Nicole Beharie (“Shame”) as Rachel Isum, who would become Robinson’s wife, as well as Christopher Meloni (upcoming “Man of Steel”) and T.R. Knight (TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy”).

“42” is set to start production on May 14 in Birmingham, Alabama, with additional locations to include Macon and Atlanta, Georgia, and Chattanooga Tennessee, where the production will mount much of the film’s baseball action at Engel Stadium, double for Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field.

Academy Award® winner Helgeland (“L.A. Confidential”) will direct from his own screenplay. Thomas Tull will produce, with Dick Cook, Jon Jashni, and Jason Clark executive producing. Oscar® nominee Don Burgess (“Forrest Gump”) is the director of photography, Richard Hoover (HBO’s “Temple Grandin”) is production designer, and Caroline Harris (“A Knight’s Tale”) is the costume designer.

Review: "The Honeymooners" is Sweet and Charming (Happy B'day, Cedric the Entertainer)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 93 (of 2005) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Honeymooners (2005)
Running time: 90 minutes (1 hour, 30 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for some innuendo and rude humor
DIRECTOR: John Schultz
WRITERS: Danny Jacobson and David Sheffield & Barry W. Blaustein and Don Rhymer (based on characters from the CBS television series)
PRODUCERS: David T. Friendly, Marc Turtletaub, Eric C. Rhone, and Julie Durk
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Shawn Maurer
EDITOR: John Pace

COMEDY

Starring: Cedric the Entertainer, Mike Epps, Gabrielle Union, Regina Hall, Eric Stoltz, John Leguizamo, Jon Polito, Carol Woods, Ajay Naidu, and Alice Drummond

The subject of this movie review is The Honeymooners. This 2005 family comedy takes the classic television series, The Honeymooners, and transforms the characters into African-Americans, while also setting the story in the 21st Century.

Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) is a dreamer. By day, he is a New York city bus driver. During his off-hours, he is an inventor, an entrepreneur, and an innovator who is always one get-rich-quick scheme away from instant wealth, and he has a closet full of failed products to prove it. Most of the time, Ralph’s best friend and upstairs neighbor, Ed Norton (Mike Epps), is along for the ride. Ralph’s wife, Alice (Gabrielle Union), has been putting up with it for years, but now she has had enough. Alice has her sights on a practical dream, the American dream; she and Ed’s wife, Trixie (Regina Hall), want to buy a duplex fixer-upper house that the two couples could share and build into their dream home. However, Ralph’s latest half-baked project turns out to be really half-baked, and he spent his and Alice’s savings on it. Now, he needs Ed’s help on another big money plan if he’s going to replenish their savings before Alice leaves him.

Other than the character names, a few domestic and job facts, and the title, the film The Honeymooners bares little resemblance to the CBS television series of the 1950’s that many consider classic TV and an important program in television history. The four lead characters that were white in the original are now black, which should set some tongues to wagging. All that doesn’t, in the end, matter when it comes to the issue at hand, and that’s the current film. Is The Honeymooners a good film, and how good is it?

The Honeymooners, like a lot of Hollywood film product for so many years now, is cursed with a limp script and an unimaginative director. The concept: Ralph’s latest get-rich-quick plan backfires and not only costs him money, but might cost him his marriage, was a stable of the original TV program. Apparently that concept worked great for a half-hour TV show (about 22 minutes of actual show and the rest commercials), but stretched to a 90 minute feature-length film, it doesn’t fly… or at least not long enough. The director moves The Honeymooners at a plodding pace, almost as if he were following the recipe to make bland-tasting baked goods. The script contains not a sparkle of wit or imagination, and the romance and love between husband and wife are woefully hollow notes.

The weak film structure forces the burden to entertain the audience upon the backs of the cast. Cedric the Entertainer and Mike Epps are up to the challenge; in fact, they add a lot of their own construction work to this shell of a film and make it worth seeing. A lot of the humor in Cedric’s comedic style comes from his expressive face and watching how he reacts in certain situations and to particular incidents. Epps is the perfect sidekick, a combination clown and straight man, he can do the silly stuff, or he can be the guy who balances the hijinks of the class clown. Sadly, the talented Gabrielle Union and Regina Hall (who adds meat to the comic routine she used in the Scary Movie franchise) have to fight for what little screen time they have. The limp script spends so much time anally fixated on Ralph’s next-great idea that it ignores half of what made the Ralph Kramden/Ed Norton act work – the wives.

John Leguizamo also does an edgy and hilarious turn as a jack-of-all-scams dog trainer that should remind a lot of people not only how funny this fine comedian is, but what a good actor he is. Cedric, Epps, and Leguizamo make a dynamic comic trio. Ultimately, the cast is funny enough and surprisingly charming enough on the strength of performances to make The Honeymooners worth watching, even though it’s not worth a trip to the theatre.

5 of 10
B-

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Review: Yes, "Pink Flamingos" is Culturally Significant (Happy B'day, John Waters)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 154 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

John Water’s Pink Flamingos (1972)
Running time: 93 minutes (1 hour, 33 minutes)
MPAA – NC-17 for a wide range of perversions in explicit detail (re-rating for 1997 re-release)
PRODUCER/WRITER/DIRECTOR: John Waters
EDITOR/CINEMATOGRAPHER: John Waters

COMEDY/CRIME

Starring: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Danny Mills, Edith Massey, Channing Wilroy, Cookie Mueller, Paul Swift, Susan Walsh, and Linda Olgierson

Pink Flamingos is a 1972 black comedy and exploitation film from director John Waters. Controversial upon its initial release, because of its depiction of perverse acts, Pink Flamingos went on to become a cult film because of its notoriety. The film follows a notorious female criminal and underground figure who resists attempts to both humiliate her and to steal her tabloid reputation.

Divine (Divine) lives on the outskirts of Baltimore in a trailer with her degenerate son, Crackers (Danny Mills), her dim-bulb mother, Edie (Edith Massey), and her “traveling companion,” Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce). She lives under the pseudonym Babs Johnson, and in local outsider community and to its news press is known as the “Filthiest Person Alive.” However, local couple, Connie (Mink Stole) and Raymond Marble (David Lochary), also vies for that title. The vile Marble clan launches an unbridled assault on Babs Johnson’s reputation and on her home. But Babs and her family fight back in a small war that breaks just about every taboo in the book: incest, drug trafficking, bestiality, castration, murder, cannibalism, etc.

It seems impossible that (regardless of what other films he has directed in the past or may direct in the future) John Waters will be best remembered for any film other than Pink Flamingos. Cheaply made with a cast of amateur actors and locals from the Baltimore area (from where Waters originates), this is the kind of film that would normally merit a review of “no stars” or a grade of “F,” simply because it isn’t like a “normal” film (at least not one from Hollywood). However, Pink Flamingos may be the ultimate low budget trash movie, the ultimate camp experience, and a supreme ode to bad taste. Fun, vile, and also disgusting to the point that many people might turn off the TV early in the film (or walk out the theatre), Pink Flamingos is an object – a piece of art by someone who wants to put his thumb in the eye of American values. It doesn’t matter if its working class, middle class, church-going, God-fearing, or baseball-mom-and-apple pie American values, John Water made Pink Flamingos an assault on decency.

New Line Cinema, the film company that distributed the movie in 1972, released a trailer for Pink Flamingos that did not include scenes from the film, so in that vein, I won’t give away more about the movie. I will say that no serious fan of movies can go without seeing it.

8 of 10
A

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

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Kevin Hart Shameless in Shameless "Soul Plane"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 85 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux


Soul Plane (2004)
Running time: 86 minutes (1 hour, 26 minutes)
MPAA – R for strong sexual content, language and some drug use
DIRECTOR: Jessy Terrero
WRITERS: Bo Zenga and Chuck Wilson
PRODUCERS: David Scott Rubin and Jessy Terrero
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jonathan Sela
EDITOR: Michael R. Miller
COMPOSERS: Christopher Lennertz and RZA

COMEDY

Starring: Tom Arnold, Kevin Hart, Method Man, Snoop Dogg, K.D. Aubert, Godfrey, Brian Hooks, D.L. Hughley, Arielle Kebbel, Mo’Nique, Ryan Pinkston, Missi Pyle, Sofia Vergara, Gary Anthony Williams, Karl Malone, Li’l John, and John Witherspoon

The subject of this movie review is Soul Plane, a 2004 jiggaboo comedy. Kevin Hart stars as a young man who starts his own Black-centric airline, and the story focuses on the maiden voyage of the sole plane in his non-existent fleet.

That white writers (usually from upper middle class backgrounds) wrote sketch comedy making fun of black culture used to piss me off. Why the hell couldn’t Hollywood just hire black writers, I rhetorically asked, to write about blacks since white film and TV executives felt that only whites could write about whites. Well, if the best that black writers and filmmakers can do is Soul Plane, never let a nigga touch another sheet of paper.

When Nashawn Wade (Kevin Hart) wins a $100 million settlement for negligence from an airline, he decides to start his own airline: NWA. Lest you confuse yourself, this NWA is not that N.W.A.; for the sake of this movie the acronym stands for “Nashawn Wade Airline.” In flight meals can be anything from Cristal and filet mignon to Colt .45 and Popeye’s fried chicken. The airline’s one plane is purple and rolls on dubs, and the stewardesses are big booty ho’s in Daisy Dukes. When his cousin (badly played by rapper Method Man) hires an ex-con (Snoop Dogg) to fly the plane, you know there’s going to be trouble and hilarity ensues.

Soul Plane is a poorly made collection of stereotypes, blaxtiploitation, riffs on hip hop culture, deplorable acting, and feeble musical tracks. Except for a few moments, the film is painfully unfunny. In fact, 9.5 of every ten minutes of this film is not funny, although the few good scenes are both shocking, painfully embarrassing, and outrageously hilarious – kind of like Scary Movie 3, but with way fewer yucks. Frankly, it’s more saddening than bad.

The cast is either extraordinarily untalented or just misused. Kevin Hart is a Sambo version of Chris Tucker, and his performance is like a frantic and desperate crackhead trying to be funny. Mo’Nique isn’t in the movie enough, and Tom Arnold (practically the lone salvation of this film) may have his name at the front of the credits, but this is (quite unfortunately) not his film.

1 of 10
D-